AUBERGINE (diminutive of Fr. auberge, a variant of alberge, a kind of peach), or Egg Plant (Solanum melongena, var. ovigerum), a tender annual widely cultivated in the warmer parts of the earth, and in France and Italy, for the sake of its fruits, which are eaten as a vegetable. The seed should be sown early in February in a warm pit, where the plants are grown till shifted into 8-in. or 10-in. pots, in well-manured soil. Liquid manure should be given occasionally while the fruit is swelling; about four fruits are sufficient for one plant. The French growers sow them in a brisk heat in December, or early in January, and in March plant them out four or eight in a hot-bed with a bottom heat of from 60° to 68°, the sashes being gradually more widely opened as the season advances, until at about the end of May they may be taken off. The two main branches which are allowed are pinched to induce laterals, but when the fruits are set all young shoots are taken off in order to increase their size. The best variety is the large purple, which produces oblong fruit, sometimes reaching 6 or 7 in. in length and 10 or 12 in. in circumference. The fruit of the ordinary form almost exactly resembles the egg of the domestic fowl. It is also grown as an ornamental plant, for covering walls or trellises; especially the black-fruited kind.
AUBERVILLIERS, or Aubervilliers-les-Vertus, a town of northern France, in the department of Seine, on the canal St Denis, 2 m. from the right bank of the Seine and 1 m. N. of the fortifications of Paris. Pop. (1906) 33,358. Its manufactures include cardboard, glue, oils, colours, fertilizers, chemical products, perfumery, &c. During the middle ages and till modern times Aubervilliers was the resort of numerous pilgrims, who came to pay honour to Notre Dame des Vertus. In 1814 the locality was the scene of a stubborn combat between the French and the Allies.
AUBIGNAC, FRANÇOIS HÉDELIN, Abbé d’ (1604-1676), French author, was born at Paris on the 4th of August 1604. His father practised at the Paris bar, and his mother was a daughter of the great surgeon Ambroise Paré. François Hédelin was educated for his father’s profession, but, after practising for some time at Nemours he abandoned law, took holy orders, and was appointed tutor to one of Richelieu’s nephews, the duc de Fronsac. This patronage secured for him the abbey of Aubignac and of Mainac. The death of the duc de Fronsac in 1646 put an end to hopes of further preferment, and the Abbé d’Aubignac retired to Nemours, occupying himself with literature till his death on the 25th of July 1676. He took an energetic share in the literary controversies of his time. Against Gilles Ménage he wrote a Térence justifié (1656); he laid claim to having originated the idea of the “Carte de tendre” of Mlle de Scudéry’s Clélie; and after being a professed admirer of Corneille he turned against him because he had neglected to mention the abbé in his Discours sur le poème dramatique. He was the author of four tragedies: La Cyminde (1642), La Pucelle d’Orléans (1642), Zénobie (1647) and Le Martyre de Sainte Catherine (1650). Zénobie was written with the intention of affording a model in which the strict rules of the drama, as understood by the theorists, were observed. In the choice of subjects for his plays, he seems to have been guided by a desire to illustrate the various kinds of tragedy—patriotic, antique and religious. The dramatic authors whom he was in the habit of criticizing were not slow to take advantage of the opportunity for retaliation offered by the production of these mediocre plays. It is as a theorist that D’Aubignac still arrests attention. It has been proved that to Jean Chapelain belongs the credit of having been the first to establish as a practical law the convention of the unities that plays so large a part in the history of the French stage; but the laws of dramatic method and construction generally were codified by d’Aubignac in his Pratique du théâtre. The book was only published in 1657, but had been begun at the desire of Richelieu as early as 1640. His Conjectures académiques sur l’Iliade d’Homère, which was not published until nearly forty years after his death, threw doubts on the existence of Homer, and anticipated in some sense the conclusions of Friedrich August Wolf in his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795).
The contents of the Pratique du théâtre are summarized by F. Brunetière in his notice of Aubignac in the Grande Encydopédie. See also G. Saintsbury, Hist. of Criticism, bk. v., and H. Rigault, Hist. de la querelle des anciens et modernes. (1859).
AUBIGNÉ, CONSTANT D’ [Baron de Surineau] (c. 1584-1647), French adventurer, was the son of Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, and the father of Madame de Maintenon. Born a Protestant, he became by turns Catholic or Protestant as it suited his interests. He betrayed the Protestants in 1626, revealing to the court, after a voyage to England, the projects of the English upon La Rochelle. He was renounced by his father; then imprisoned by Richelieu’s orders at Niort, where he was detained ten years. After having tried his fortunes in the Antilles, he died in Provence, leaving in destitution his wife, Jeanne de Cardillac, whom he had married in 1627. He had two children, Charles, father of the duchess of Noailles, and Françoise, known in history as Madame de Maintenon.
See T. Lavallée, La Famille d’Aubigné et l’enfance de Madame de Maintenon (Paris, 1863).